Thrice
by alexajoe
Summary: Lily Evans and James Potter thrice defied Lord Voldemort, but what events brought them to those encounters, and what finally fell into place to allow them to be the epic story everyone loves. The story of Lily and James from sixth year and on; how they became friends, found love, and fought off the evilest wizard of all time. J/L (T for now, might become M later)


Lily Evans did not like endings, and that is what it was starting to feel like. She looked around the hall at the demolished chunks of stairs, and broken tapestries and felt a deep penetrating anger that evil could surface here and tear things apart.

She wanted to walk down to the lake, but there was snow on the ground and that felt too final.

She really did hate endings.

It wasn't the finality of it all that she hated, the perfectionist in her loved to squeeze every particle into an organized tube and file it away, but it was the loneliness. You couldn't find friends in an ending, nor could you find happiness. And of all things, that is what Lily Evans needed the most.

She smirked to herself as she walked by the Dining Hall, it was mostly undamaged; the Marauders wouldn't dare fight in a place that served food as delicious as Hogwarts had. It was strange, in a day that same ghost-ridden room would be filled with talkative students bragging about Christmas holiday. Where they had traveled, who they had snogged, what alcohol they had stolen while their parents were too drunk to notice...

But there was something disturbing in the serene silence that Lily Evans found at the end of the Gryffindor table. She looked across the hall at the far table, usually swarmed with a mass of green, and she realized it wasn't really an end yet. She hated endings, and she hated this feeling (and there weren't many things that she hated), but those two weren't connected this time. She hated this feeling because it was actually the beginning of everything.

And she hated that most of all.

She could hear the pattering of fast falling footsteps that seemed to be aimed directly at her, and although she usually loved to be in the loop, she wanted to take this moment to feel sorry for herself. The next bout of drama would relinquish her rights to feel sad about her own life, so she sunk under the table in a single selfish moment, and waited for the footsteps to subside.

She could hear the heavy breathing of whoever had been running, so she tucked her legs tight against herself, and pretended like she was back playing hide and seek with Petunia in the garden bushes.

Lily Evans had a nose for danger, she could feel the tingling sensation creep up her nostril as soon as the threat was introduced, and she knew that she was in danger of feeling a lot of different things in that instant. She knew she wanted to run, and wanted to hide, and wanted to change her name and dye her hair to escape whatever hell was going to find her next; but she also knew that no matter how many pattering feet approached her in her lifetime, she wouldn't let herself hide for long.

She sensed the person lean down, and place their elbows on the bench, and their head in their arms. It was the sign of defeat, anger, and distress; and she knew who that huge sigh escaped from as soon as those huge, bright eyes glimpsed her huddled under a table.

"C'mon Hopper, there's something we need to do..."

Lily Evans almost smiled; she hated that nickname more than endings and beginnings, and being in the middle of everything, but hearing it made her feel that it was the beginning of something that she wouldn't mind, and that she could live with.

Later on, Lily Evans would regret hiding under that table, she would regret not immediately running up to the pattering footsteps and directly asking what was wrong, and a year later she would regret a lot of things that she hadn't had the courage to do...

But in that moment she appreciated the ending for what it was, and the new beginning for what it would bring.

_(A/N_) _Just a quick prologue for the first part of this story. None of Harry Potter is mine, it all belongs to the lovely Jo Rowling._

_The first chapter should be up in the next couple of days, and if you would like to review/favorite/alert that would be lovely! Thanks for reading!_


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